Colder Than Dead
by Confused Pumpkin
Summary: You can't learn about and understand - and love - a person in only fifty sentences. Or can you? One-shot Challenge: Week 3


**Author's Note – **My second one-shot contribution for the Weekly Challenges, hosted by WindowChild and ShadowPalace. Trust me, I couldn't write 50 sentences in 5 hours. It took me an entire night. One factor, I guess, was the sentence limit. There was so much I wanted to put, but alas, we can't all have what we want.

**Week 3 Story Challenge** – Write a 50 sentence story about a child of the Big Three: Percy, Nico, Thalia, or Bianca. The fifty prompts are below. You MUST use those. (And the prompts are written below, numbered and typed in bold.)

**Disclaimer: Everything mentioned below belongs wholly to Rick Riordan.**

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Colder Than Dead

_By YoungDreamer_

**1. Loop**

Nico di Angelo is not a kid whom you can say is "in the loop," disappearing into the Underworld for long periods of time without any contact with the living (or the sane).

**2. Shine**

The bright glow from the polished celestial bronze gives off a beautiful shine and something deep inside him stirs, a longing for the glint of battle armor flashing in the sun, a longing that had lain dormant for ages and now rears up, coursing through his veins.

**3. Crack**

The marble floor of the pavilion holds the scar still, a giant crack in its midst which will never fade, and his heart is like that – ripped open once then sealed, but still bearing the terrible crack down the middle.

**4. Hide**

He remembers playing hide-and-seek with Bianca a few days before his mother died, days in which the children spent time happily dunking each other in the hotel fountain and hiding behind columns.

**5. Sin**

Because that's what the Underworld's all about; when you live in your demented father's palace, you start to understand exactly how much craziness evolves from this ambitious trait.

**6. Door**

Shattered fragments from his past life manage to worm their way into his mind, and he is sure that if he can find the correct doorway in which the memories are sealed, he can overcome the power of the River Lethe – but first he must find the door.

**7. Wind**

The terrible gale pushes him back, tearing at his clothes and tugging fiercely at his small ten-year-old body, and he curls up in the dark corner of the alleyway, alone, afraid, and miserable, his cries for Bianca carried away by the wind.

**8. Bell**

The bell of an old church tolls slowly and he gathers close to see what is going on; a ceremony for a dead person is being held and he wonders exactly how many more deaths he will have to witness, how many more tolls of the bell he will be subjected to listen to, which are slightly ironic questions seeing as to who his father is.

**9. Pocket**

There's nothing in this jacket but a little figurine tucked away in the inside pocket, a little bronze-casted figure of a god which he holds secretly next to his heart – her last gift.

**10. Lend**

He is like a shy fawn, coming forward and nibbling a fern before shying away, lending you his heart for a while before asking for it back, afraid to let anyone truly possess it until you can earn his trust (which, trust me, takes quite a while).

**11. Triangle**

Anything with threes in them makes him want to throw up most of the time: The Three Fates, The Three Furies (go away, Alecto, I'm _not_ calling you a Kindly One), The Three Gray Sister, etcetera, etcetera – maybe it's safe to say Nico won't be in any contact with triangles.

**12. Satin**

Indistinctly, almost as if from a muddled hazy dream, he thinks he can remember some things about his mother, the smell of the nineteen-hundred's satin which she always wore, the feel of her soft black dress.

**13. Keep**

You can't keep everything in life, and he's had to throw away some things, but one thing he wants to save as his own forever is his memories, precious memories.

**14. Swim**

The day is meant to be calm, predictable, and quiet, but when you have Percy Jackson as a cousin, you can always expect an unplanned dive in the ocean or something along those lines.

**15. Lure**

He is a hunter and acceptance is the quarry that he relentlessly pursues, lured on by the intoxicating thought of friends, and he is armed with a bow of courage and arrows of achievements which he hopes to pierce his prey with.

**16. Mane**

He grabs the pegasus's flowing mane as the horse rocks dangerously and it whinnies in distress, probably swearing in pony language that it is going to make very bad things happen to him.

**17. Spoon**

Nico throws down his utensils and rushes from the room in anger, shoving the door hard; Maria sorrowfully picks up the lone metal spoon and wishes she could answer his questions about his father.

**18. Real**

The world spins out of control and Percy's words are drowned out in the roar of blood in his head, _she's not gone, she can't be gone_, his brain refuses to believe it, he knows it's true but he insists upon denying it because he knows that he can't face the real world.

**19. Spain**

"I don't know why I'm here – last thing I remembered, I was shadow travelling to Percy's apartment!"

**20. Hold**

He is like a baby, his memories washed away in the River Lethe, and the world is such a terrifying place to his newly innocent mind; he grasps at straws, trying to find something familiar, a hold that tethers him to the world, but he finds nothing.

**21. Spy**

He refuses to acknowledge the world of Camp Half-Blood while in pursuit of something strong enough to kill Percy, but once in a while he can't help chancing a glance at – spying on – those he once called friends.

**22. Lamb**

That's what his mother used to call him, he remembers now – _il mio agnello_, my little lamb.

**23. Roof**

The pegasus aims a kick at him and he springs onto the safety of the Big House's roof, swearing under his breath about stupid ponies – until he remembers that they have wings. Damned pegasi.

**24. Line**

He envies math because there is always a right and wrong answer, never any shades of gray, and he envies lines even more, because they go in one direction and are sure of where they're going, unlike him, whose choices weigh upon him heavily each day.

**25.** **Side**

"I'll be by your side no matter what, Nico, protecting you, loving you as a sister should, never letting any harm come to you, and I promise I'll never, ever leave."

**26. Hand**

He huddles in the darkness, waiting, and what he is waiting for he knows not, perhaps wishing that a smile would lift him up and take him from this nightmare like the hands of an angel.

**27. Bowl**

As soon as Persephone is gone, he leans forward and tips the bowl of white flowers off the table, resulting in one broken bowl, a few dozen washed-out lilacs, and a dandelion where he was just sitting, which the queen unceremoniously picks up and casually plants in her garden.

**28. Cycle**

All his life he's seen the cycle of life and death repeated over and over and it never changes, and he knows that it never will, not even for him.

**29. Ruins**

And that is the place his beloved sister meets her doom, deep in the ruins of a heap of godly junk (or says Percy, who really has no tongue for description).

**30. Burn**

The flames flicker across his face, dancing like lithe fire nymphs, while he watches the only thing that connects him to his sister smolder into ashes.

**31. Knit**

He finds a black, carefully crocheted sweater in the unused closet of Hades' palace, half finished with the knitting needles still attached, and when he holds it to his nose, he can smell the faint, almost nonexistent perfume of his mother.

**32. Shade**

The shadows are his steady companions; they never leave, they never fail to show up, and they never complain when he asks them for a little bit of room in their dark bottomless depths.

**33. Blind**

And that's what he is, overcome with pain, thirsting for vengeance, a cloak wrapped over his eyes as he blunders blindly into the darkness that is his future.

**34. Rage**

It is the foundation of his actions, what he acts upon, the fire that fuels his spirit.

**35. Plane**

The roar overhead makes him look up in interest and he comments lightly to his sister that he's never seen a plane look like that before, so sleek and shiny; the planes of the War are mere toys in comparison – when could they have changed?

**36. Stage**

And that's what the life of a mortal is, a play, a stage, an amusement for the gods, something those immortal beings can trifle with without a care in the world, and he hates it, the pain, the loss, the death, the life of his sister that he held so valuably in his palm thrown away so easily.

**37. Deck**

He's standing on the deck of the Lotus Hotel and Casino, looking out at the horizon which changes so quickly, and he wonders why he can't remember anything.

**38. Juice**

The straw is brought to his lips and he drinks slowly, painfully, sipping in tiny intervals; the nectar tastes like freshly squeezed juice, a taste his buds remember from long ago, and both the godly drink and the memory heal him.

**39. Rain**

He's running in the rain, slipping, falling, getting up again, just trying to get away from the truth, the horrible reality, the terrible world in which _she's gone_.

**40. Pie**

Well, one thing he's learned today is that the dead don't really like food at all, much less apple pie – even on Thanksgiving.

**41. Sneeze**

The violent _Achoo!_ sends spirits jumping back in anxiety and he gazes incredulously at them, wondering how their fear of his power extends so far as to include his _sneezes_.

**42. Land**

After being in the Underworld for so long, he can't believe the vividness of the Upper world, a land as bright with color and love as the Underworld is dark with shadows and moaning, a land so bright it makes his eyes sting with tears.

**43. ****Silver**

He is forever scared of that color, after his rare meeting with the moody, unpredictable teenage Artemis at the age of ten.

**44. Poison**

He is sure that this is not milk, but a cream-colored poison that Persephone willingly serves him; he would not drink it anyway because of all that eating-food-from-the-land-of-the-dead business, but is it possible to die of food poisoning in the Underworld?

**45. Animal **

In the woods, not even the predatory animals come close to him; all animals flee when they feel his dark presence, the presence of oncoming death, leaving him alone by himself.

**46. Slide**

The playground was new seventy years ago but is definitely old and deserted now, but he remains there faithfully, a solitary figure in the gathering dusk, sitting at the top of the metal slide and letting himself fall, fall, fall to the bottom.

**47. Plant**

Out of all the outcomes he'd imagined that resulted in pissing off Persephone, he still can't believe that he'd forgotten about her being able to turn him into a blooming plant.

**48. Rose**

With furrowed brows, he leans down and plucks the flower from the garden and it withers in his hand, dead only seconds after the stem is severed.

**49. Tea **

He doesn't know why his father insists upon the two of them having tea daily with Persephone and Demeter; after all, the goddesses only talk about wheat and turn things (and occasionally young boys) into flowers.

**50. Mend**

Every wound, physical and emotional, heals somehow, and whether he likes his rebellious reputation or not, Nico has healed too.

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**Don't ask about the title. I don't even know how I came up with it myself; I just thought it sounded cool, and it sorta fit Nico. Please review, they mean a lot to me!**


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